Best
by Lord Kristine
Summary: A collection of shorts dealing with childhood trauma and the loss of innocence.
1. Beginnings

My name is Mariana Stashing, but you know me as Zach's girlfriend. Well, I'm technically his ex-girlfriend, but you didn't know that. Isn't it sad that the only identity I've retained is based on my relationship with another person? I'm sure it's the case for many people, but it hurts a lot more for me because we dated around thirty years ago. Yes, it's been _that_ long. Currently, I'm forty-nine and working at Jurassic World. After all that trouble, they reopened. It's all thanks to Claire, that old cow.

That sounded mean. I didn't want it to sound mean.

I'm only bitter because while Zach has been enjoying a life of fame, I'm stuck here shoveling dinosaur feces. Slander is not flattering to my character, I know, and maybe a kinder person would be happy for their ex's success. But it's been a long time since we were together, and he barely remembers me. Nobody does. I just go through life, do my job, hope for a miracle . . . I guess I should be making my own miracles, but once you're in a rut, it's hard to get out. What am I supposed to do, anyway? Nobody wants a woman nearing fifty to get in their way. Nobody wanted me getting in the way when I was younger, even. Especially my grandmother.

Her.

You've heard the stories of Claire Dearing and Owen Grady and maybe even a yellow dragon, but you've never heard mine in full. Probably because there are no dinosaurs, no high stakes, no epic battles . . . It's just me. Me and my grandmother. My abusive, insane grandmother. Well, if you're willing to read, I'm willing to write, and it's about time the crimes of Deborah Stashing were made public. This will be good for me, I know, because I can finally put my worries to rest. I can confirm once and for all that she was a crazy woman who would settle for nothing less than perfection.

She wanted me to be the best.


	2. Bribes

The tricky thing about my grandmother is that it's hard to explain why she's evil using examples. Oh, I have plenty of stories that make her look less than flattering, but a lot of my anecdotes don't seem that way at first glance, because it's not the events themselves, but the _undercurrents_ that are too subtle for most people to truly grasp. It's difficult to understand what I'm saying unless you've been in the same situation. That's why I'm hesitant to make my concerns public: I have to say things like "No, you don't understand! She made us build _gingerbread houses_!". I'll explain the gingerbread houses later, but first, I'll give you an example of her subtle manipulation to illustrate my point.

When I was a kid, I _loved_ dinosaurs. It's an odd interest for a little girl (or at least it was in the 90's), and I'm sure my grandmother wasn't keen on it, because she forced me to play with a miniature tea set instead of action figures. But once, we were out shopping, and I saw a plastic Allosaurus, my favorite dinosaur at the time. She told me that she'd buy it for me if I kissed her on the cheek whenever she tapped it with her index finger and puckered her lips. God, she was disgusting. I can see her now, all saggy and splotchy and covered in peach fuzz. The image makes me want to throw up. But it might not sound bad to you. I don't know.

See, something like this incident might be a funny joke in any other family, but my grandmother was dead serious. She wanted me to kiss her in front of her friends to show them how loyal and obedient I was. How much I _supposedly_ loved her. She was putting on a show.

You might be wondering whether or not I agreed to this deal. Well, there's a green allosaurus on my shelf. I was just a kid, after all, and I thought it was worth it to get my stupid toy.

But it was the plastic equivalent of blood money.


	3. Promises

Promises, promises. That's what my grandmother was all about. Her bribes didn't always manifest themselves in physical form. Sometimes, she wouldn't even bother to carry through. Scratch that. She outright _lied_. A promise tomorrow . . . you know the drill.

She offered to take me to Australia, once. At the time, I was fascinated with the unique wildlife found in the area, but I never expected to actually _go_ there in my childhood. I mean, I _dreamed_ , but . . . And you know, she never took me. The point isn't that I was cheated out of a trip, I mean, by The Star, not many people are lucky enough to go on fancy vacations, but the fact that she _lied_ . . .

I'm not making myself clear.

Let me tell you about the puppy I never got. I'm perfectly aware that it's a First World cliché (indeed, I also asked for a pony once), but there's a difference between what you're thinking of and . . . and what happened to me.

I'm not being clear. I'm not-

Look, she promised to buy us a puppy for several years. She said we'd get it in the spring, or once she renovated. My sister got dog treats for Christmas as a passive-aggressive hint for a present that would never come. Hell, my grandmother even made her a custom shirt that said "I want a dog" with a disembodied head of one of those spherical-curly-fluffy breeds. Worst of all, she brought us to the pet store and had us pick out a puppy. Play with it. Grow to love it. Can you imagine what that did to us?

But she didn't care. She just wanted to create the illusion of a perfect family. I'm _glad_ we didn't get a puppy. She's not capable of caring for a living creature.

But I got a roboraptor once. It was a Christmas miracle. I never asked for one . . . Well, okay, I set the computer background to a picture of the toy, cut out a newspaper article on the technology behind it, and hovered by the electronics section whenever we went shopping, but . . . You know, it was magical. It was like one of those family films where a kid prays for a bike and against all odds receives it. So there were brief moments of happiness, but they were scattered in a sea of misery.

And I still wonder who adopted that puppy we loved so much.


	4. Photographs

My grandmother married two doctors. The first, my grandfather, I don't remember well, because he died when I was very young. I'm told he was quiet and kind, but a little homophobic. When she found out that he had cancer, my grandmother went into denial. It wasn't the normal kind of denial where you want to comfort the person who's suffering: she was a real bitch about it. Yeah, she told all of her little church friends that he was going to get better while sipping her tea and refusing to spend time with him in the hospital. She even lied about the circumstances of his death when it happened, and proceeded to use him as a way to elicit sympathy from the people who didn't like her.

God, I hate that woman.

So for any of you readers who aren't dinosaur enthusiasts, I'm going to offer a fun fact that may give you some perspective on relationships in general. Raptors mate for life. Well, the breed that comes from Jurassic World does, anyway. The scientists did a lot of studies on that overgrown species (subspecies?), and the data was rather astounding. That was back when we kept raptors in cages, mind you. Anyway, they are known to break down emotionally when their mates pass away, and it's very rare to see them hooking up with a new partner afterwards. My grandmother wasn't like that.

Without consulting us grandkids, without even _telling_ us that she was seeing someone, she just went and married a goddamn weirdo with paintings of naked women hanging all over his house. He was one of those doctors that delivers babies. Yeah, I wouldn't want him doing that to me, for sure. He was really quiet all the time, and always in a suspicious way. He never had children of his own, but he had a cat that died before we met him. The only good thing that came out of his involvement with the family was that he owned an acreage. I used to dig up old buffalo bones beside the river with my bare hands. Just making paleontologists' lives easier, I guess.

But this story isn't about that strange man. There is a greater evil I wish to convey. My grandmother used this second marriage as a tool to promote the illusion of normality, you see, and that's where the problem lies.

I remember her wedding. I remember because of my hair. She made the hairdresser pull it into a hideous coif that looked like an upside-down mushroom cloud. It hurt. It hurt and it smelled like hairspray (though the latter point didn't bother me as much because I spent a good portion of my OCD exploration years spraying my hair to a level of helmetlike sturdiness). When the young lady was done tugging at my blondish curls, she held up a mirror and asked me how I liked it. I started crying, no word of a lie. She had nothing to say except: "It's only for a day".

Fortunately, I have one small victory to look back on with bitter pride. I'm in most of the wedding pictures, and there is not a single one in which you can see even a hint of a smile on my face. The closest thing is a grimace, and that's only in one picture.

My father was squeezing my shoulder at the time.


	5. Fantasies

Moving on from that atrocious wedding . . . Actually, no. Let's _not_ move on. You wanna hear something really funny? Like, _really_ funny? My grandma stole my mother's bouquet at her wedding. Mama wanted to keep it for sentimental reasons, but dear old granny just took it away like she had every right to. Her excuse was that my mom wouldn't be able to press the flowers correctly.

You know, for every story I tell, five more resurface in my memory. I could write for eons, but then again, why live in the past? No, the best I can do is give you an idea of how evil this woman was, so that the truth can be preserved. There are stories I won't tell you, such as the one about the Dalmatian she owned as a child that probably never existed, the times she pinched me when I wouldn't behave in public, the- Well, okay, I'm kind of telling you now, but not in great detail. It's impossible to recount every single time she wronged me, because I'll never be done talking about her. These events keep bubbling up to the surface of my mind, seemingly at random. I'm sure some of the memories are repressed, too.

For a change of pace, let me tell you a story about myself. One year, I had an imaginary Thanksgiving. I didn't want to spend time with my dad's side of the family (including my grandmother), so I stayed at his house and staged a fantasy get-together. You may be wondering why my pa left me home alone during such an important holiday. Well, let's just say I have some unresolved issues with him as well.

Anyway, this party was fantastic. As I recall, I invited some pretty prestigious celebrities, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Steven Spielberg. It was all in my head, of course, but it was better than nothing. Kind of.

I know how crazy it sounds, and I knew back then, too. What I was doing was different from denial, because I never tried to deceive myself by claiming that the party was anything other than what it was: an excuse to be a little bit weird. I saw the pathetic tragedy of my fantasy even as it was happening, and I was mostly motivated by the thought that I would someday be able to tell people that I had a really strange Thanksgiving that year.

And I just did.

But it didn't last long. Eventually, I grew tired of putting words in other people's mouths, especially since they were real and would probably be insulted by my interpretations of them. So I terminated my dream. The illusion didn't end gracefully, or even abruptly. The imagined guests just sort of dissolved one by one, without me even noticing. For a good two hours after that, I was all alone.

But then again, I always had been.


	6. Manners

I said my grandmother wanted perfection. That's true. Unfortunately for me, her idea of perfection was rather archaic and _unbelievably_ pretentious. Case in point: her "dinners of the world" idea. My grandma once set up a system where me, my sister, and my two cousins would research a country before our family dinner, and we would theme the meal around whatever location she picked. Usually, it was somewhere she had already been, like Kenya. She traveled all the time. Never bought me anything, either.

Now, you may be thinking that this project sounds like something you'd do in kindergarten, rather than a regular family gathering. Congratulations, you're saner than my grandmother! Do I even have to explain how stupid it is to do something like that for a family get-together? I mean, we ought to be casual, no? No. Nothing was casual in my family. It was all about the lies.

And manners. God-forsaken manners.

"Lift your pinky when you sip your drink!" my grandma would say, "What if the queen came to visit?"

If only she had known about the real Queen, and the one who came after her (I'm still not on good terms with the latter, I assume).

Anyway, etiquette and formality are only important in certain situations. For instance, if you eat soup by scooping it up with your hands, you might be considered a rude and messy person. But something as trivial as which forks go where shouldn't matter in a private setting, especially for a child who doesn't know any better. Still, my grandmother was determined to show everyone how she could train me to be polite. Poor, obedient me, who had no way to escape her icy grip.

Who was she trying to impress? More importantly, _why_? I have no idea. Like I said, she was crazy, and crazy people have crazy motives.

I hate her.


	7. Ideals

As much as I gripe about the little things that made my grandma evil, there was one particular aspect of her personality that was the key to destroying our relationship forever; despite my constant protest, she was determined to turn me into a Christian. She made damn sure that every bit of media I consumed was religious, from film to felt cutouts. She once constructed one of those gimmick river dioramas where you move a bottle cap in a box by sliding a magnet along the base. Cool idea, but she insisted that it was for telling the story of Moses. No matter what we did, there was always a religious overtone.

If you're Christian, or perhaps religious in some other way, you might be wondering why this is such a bad thing. Religion is important to many people, after all, and it can be used to accomplish a great deal.

But it can also be used for evil.

If you're telling yourself that she was doing these things out of kindness- to save my soul and the like- you are wrong. First, it was all about show. She wanted what was best for her reputation, not me. Second, imagine that you ask someone to babysit your child, and once they do, you find out that they've been reading to them from the Koran or some such. What gives them the right to ignore your beliefs? If they want to expose your kids to something new, fine, but there's a difference between education and indoctrination.

If you take issue with this analogy or wish to criticize my reluctance to convert (perhaps claiming that your religion is more worthy of being taught than any other belief system) just remember that pretty much every religious person trusts their deity just as much as you do. If you want to support the validity of your beliefs, don't ignore the fact that the majority of spiritual leanings have a text akin to the Bible, records of events perceived as miracles, and other sources that have equal claim over the dubious title of "proof". I'm not trying to put you down if you're religious (it's none of my business whether or not you believe in invisible sky-people), but don't you think it's a little invasive to indoctrinate other people's children against their will? My mom didn't want to force religion on me, and for good reason. It made my life a million times worse!

One of the primary flaws of the Bible, in my opinion, is the way it goes about teaching people right from wrong. It claims that the primary incentive for being "good" is that you'll go to hell if you sin. Actually, this method of teaching is often used by parents. Instead of making children understand that hurting other people is wrong because everyone deserves to be treated humanely, they say that bad deeds will be reprimanded simply _because_ they are bad. This motivates children to focus on avoiding the punishment, rather than bettering themselves. If I stole a cookie from my best friend, for example, I might feel badly because she would start crying, and I'd know that I had hurt another person, something which I would not appreciate if our roles were reversed. But if my teacher came stomping along to give me a time-out without explaining the importance of empathy, the lesson I'd learn is to not get caught next time.

The reason I'm explaining this is to point out that the method of teaching presented in the Bible did not work on me, as well as many other children. So my grandmother wasn't doing me a favor by introducing me to this belief system. In fact, she often provoked a negative reaction from me, and I ended up hating the idea altogether. Why should I listen to some boring book that claims I'm a sinner without even knowing me? Why should I care what some loser in the sky thinks about the way I live, especially when he can't be bothered to save starving children in Africa?

And so I was forced to wait outside the church on Easter, pacing back and forth until my family returned. I was a child. They made me wait in the parking lot, where I could have been kidnapped ten times over.

And grandma couldn't take a hint. She brought me to Sunday School, and I cried and cried and asked to go home. Reminds me of that time she forced me into golf lessons. I expressed no interest in the sport, yet she enrolled me without my consent, and I spent the entire afternoon slamming my club into the grass out of frustration and anguish while the instructor watched in horror.

She still claims that I enjoyed my lessons.

Grandma, I'm not made of clay. You can't shape me into the person you envisioned, at least not by force. But you know what? No matter how many times you hit me, no matter how many times you said I was going to hell, no matter how many times you told me my mother and her family were scum, I never believed your lies. That was your own fault, Grandma. You did something terrible to me, and I never trusted you again.


	8. Lives

I'm in the bathroom. It's my grandmother's summer home, so I can see the outline of a mountain in the frost-glass of the window that's too high for me to reach. I know what the crank sounds like when it opens. I can still hear it. On my left is the toilet paper, which is fastened to the side of the sink-counter that runs all the way to the other side of the room. The bathtub-shower is in front of me. It is white, and its design is not unlike a hole in the wall. I always loved the circular opening, because it reminded me of a cave. Hanging from the nozzle is a pink scrubber. I remember what it feels like.

In front of the shower, I can see a carpet. It's dark green, and its yarnlike filaments look like tiny dreadlocks. It's oval-shaped, with a smaller oval inside. It feels cold when you touch it. I've stood on it countless times. To my right is the heater, which I have also stood on.

There is a craft on the wall. It's made of fabric and wood and fluff. The design is rather quaint, mostly because it depicts a pig peeking out of a bubbly barrel with a label that reads "Hog Wash" in scrapbook lettering. Perfect for a bathroom.

This is where I am when it happens.

The door opens. It's my grandmother. My younger cousin is with her. I tell her to go away. She refuses.

I'm covering my private parts. I was in the middle of my business when she entered. I tell her to leave again.

"Your cousin has to watch you so she can learn how."

I was molested by my grandmother. She denies that this event ever occurred, but I remember it vividly. I'm not the only one who suspected something was deeply wrong with her. She asked my sister to have a bath with our two cousins, who were male and female, and much younger than her. She refused to go through with it, at first. My grandmother said our cousins would be disappointed if she didn't. So she did.

When you're a child, it's hard to know what's normal and what's not, because you're raised in a closed environment. I never thought twice about the way she looked at me in the bathtub. There was no way I could have known.

She had been doing it for years. She made my father and his brother change the diapers of her friends' daughters, pointing to their exposed genitals, telling them about their anatomy. She had a neighbor strip for them, again claiming that it was to educate them on the female body.

I would only learn of these events when I was a teenager, as well as another troubling anecdote. In the words of my grandma's brother, there was something "weird going on there". This is how he described the relationship between my grandmother and her father. Was she molested too? To be honest, it doesn't really matter to me. I feel no sympathy for that monster. She came close to ruining my childhood, as well as the childhood of my sister and my cousins, I'm sure. She ruined many days, many nights, many weeks at a time . . .

But she did not ruin my life.

Now, in the year 2040, I'm alive and well. Maybe I haven't done as much with my existence as I'd hoped, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely. There's this guy who works with me on Wednesdays, and I think there might be something between us. He says he supervised the raptors when we had them. He's nice. I like him. His name is Leon.

Even though I had a troubled childhood, even though I sometimes wonder about what could have been, even though I'm pushing fifty (for Christ's sake!), I'm not particularly worried. Everyone has had bad experiences at some point in their childhood, and while some of us are worse off than others, there's no need to define ourselves by the darkest parts of our history, as long as we can find a way to escape those who seek to control us.

I'm not _just_ a girl who had an abusive grandmother: I'm a girl who works at Jurassic World. I've had twenty-three people compliment me on my smile so far, and I won Employee of the Month once. Maybe that's not much to be proud of, but I still am. The person I choose to be is not perfect, nor is she particularly interesting, but we can't all be Claire Dearing's. I'm happy being Mariana the Jurassic World employee, Mariana the cat-lover, Mariana the future wife of Leon- Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't belong to my grandmother. I never did. We are our own people, and nobody has the right to take away our identities or our happiness.

This is what I believe.


End file.
